Hundreds of Mystery Stop Signs in Cranston (RI) to Become Legal

The city of Cranston in Rhode Island (near Providence) had a strange problem on its hands recently. Over 600 stop signs mysteriously appeared around the city. This was discovered after municipal court judges had to dismiss a number of tickets because they couldn’t find the stop signs on the books.

Cranston city officials had to decide whether to make the signs legal or have them taken down (or leave them in a sort of limbo as illegal stop signs forever).

An ordinance to make the signs legal was proposed last June but the city council rejected it 5-4. The five councilors who voted against it wanted more information on the signs before making such a decision. “Three city workers were then assigned to drive around and look at 2,595 signs and checking each one against a map to determine which were the 1,903 that had been officially approved.” [sic]

Now that the city spent what seems to be a waste of time and money on that, the signs are about to become legal. City officials unanimously approved the ordinance to make them legal last night and a spokesperson for the mayor said he’d sign the ordinance into law.

And, apparently, what was initially a mystery has been somewhat clarified. Some of the signs were installed by the state and some at the request of local citizens. So, unfortunately, it wasn’t some rogue city worker or concerned resident installing them in odd places or excessively. (I think it would have been more fun if that had been the case,.. but, I guess, more wasteful.)

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Zach is the director of CleanTechnica, the most popular cleantech-focused website in the world, and Planetsave, a world-leading green and science news site. He has been covering green news of various sorts since 2008, and he has been especially focused on solar energy, electric vehicles, and wind energy since 2009.
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